“Disgusting” he thought as he wandered home aimlessly through alleyways littered with broken bottles and broken people. He usually wasn’t out this late but the prospect of being alone with his thoughts terrified him, so he’d aimed to drown them at a local bar. “Am I a cliche?”, he wondered aloud as he walked, posing it as a question made the reality of the situation more bearable, as though there was a slim chance that the drunken failed writer meandering home to nobody could ever not be a cliche. He’d taken the dangerous route home as well, justified with a nod to Frost, but in silent fervent hope that he’d perhaps be given a reason to be as pathetic as he was. “A mugging would do” and he genuinely hoped for one, because a mugging wouldn’t be boring, and a mugging might finally give him something to write about. He fancied himself as being quite poignant in the moment, deftly evading the piles of festering garbage strewn about in his path, a sordid man in a sordid state, tragically possessed of a keen ability to find himself poetic when reality disagreed.
“I’ll trade a kiss for whatever you’ve got in your wallet”, he paused and turned to face the source of the oddest panhandle he’d ever heard. She couldn’t have been more than 21, her ragged shoes were coated with grime, with soles that grasped weakly at the leather, falling away, revealing that they may have once been white. Her grey pants had been soiled many times over and she wore an overlarge jacket that drowned her frail frame. He avoided her eyes.
“Two kisses then?”
He looked up and to her left at an overflowing dumpster, she’d made her home in the flattened boxes that had carelessly spilled out. He’d feel bad if he could, but the idea that someone could have it worse off than he did threatened the imagined glory of his own anguish. He moved to continue on his way, ignoring her.
“At least look me in the eyes and tell me no”
He paused again and obliged, immediately regretting his decision. His trepidation disappeared when his eyes locked hers though, now that he’d finally looked at her he saw beauty. Raven hair framed her dirty face, matted in the back, twisted nervously into frayed locks around the edges, but sharp elegant features cut his eyes like diamond on glass. Her lips were full and red, as though she’d been drinking blood, his perhaps. Her nose, small and straight sat between a pair of large eyes, dark grey like wet stone. They transfixed him, they swallowed him, he stared for what felt like hours.
“No kisses then? Fine, what about a fortune?”
“Huh?” he asked, bewildered, still drowning in her eyes.
“I can tell you your future” she said matter of factly, and in the moment he believed her beyond a shadow of a doubt, once again searching for poetry in the mundane.
He pulled out his wallet, fumbling, and emptied a pittance into her hands, the last of what he had.
“Two dollars?” she asked, incredulously. “Fine, I can tell you two things then.” pausing.
He waited, and continued to stare, biting his lips, a nervous habit.
“First, you’ll see me again.” letting the words hang in the air like the smell of stale whiskey on his fetid breath.
“And second?”
“Second, I’ll be there to watch you die.” She seemed amused at the thought as he stood, baffled, stunned, searching for words.
She cut off his racing thoughts, “off you go then, and in fact, I must be going as well”, and broke his gaze. He could breathe again now that she wasn’t staring through him, fingers deftly removed from his mind.
When he finally found words all he could muster was “Wait”
“Wait?” her amusement transcended to delight.
“Wait. If I am to die in your presence, then at least tell me your name.” attempting to brush her prediction off as the ravings of a lunatic.
“My name is as unimportant as you are.” She stood and began to walk away, “but if you must know”, turning her gaze to him once more, thrown over her shoulder like a reluctant consolation, “my name is Katya”.
He stood staring as she disappeared into the darkness of the alleyway, fading into the filth. He stood staring until he heard the last of her footsteps, softly blending into the sounds of the city.
Katya. Katya. Katya, he thought as he finished his walk home, trying to make sense of her words, trying desperately to write them off as nonsense. He couldn’t get her out of his head.
He wanted to write about her, and he did his best to, but every time he finished and reread his work it seemed not to do her justice. In his head he saw the universe in her eyes, he wanted to see them staring back at him in his words but he couldn’t no matter how hard he tried. He wrote about the things he’d do if he saw her again, how he’d pull back her dirty hair, how he’d kiss her perfect red lips, how he’d bite them. He’d write about drowning in her emotionless grey eyes, he’d write about what she must’ve seen in his. He’d write, and he’d read, and he’d fill his trashcan again and again with balled up paper, never quite able to capture what he’d felt when he saw her. He glorified himself as her savior, a beautiful thing it would be, he thought, were he to meet her again, to pull her off the street and offer his home to her.
He walked that same alleyway every day for awhile, hoping to find her again, never able to, impotent in his boundless desire to capture the love he’d imagined into existence around a girl he knew nothing about.
Eventually, however, as days ran into months, he forgot about her, his hope dwindled into the emptiness of his life. He let the memory of her die in numbness, unwilling to face the reality that he could’ve lost the only serviceable muse he’d ever found.
When he finally saw her again he thought he must be dreaming, yet there she stood, pouring drinks to lonely men behind a bar he’d ducked into to avoid the rain on the walk home from the one he usually haunted. Her black hair was pulled neatly behind her head this time, and her face was clean from the grime that had previously covered it, revealing flawless porcelain skin. Fitting, he thought, as he stared in awe, it framed her bloody lips nicely.
He was angry that she’d saved herself before he could.
He must’ve looked like an idiot as he stood blocking the doorway, unaware that the pitiful patronage of the bar had begun to stare.
“Do you plan on letting all the heat out?” she yelled across the dimly lit room, shocking him out of his stupor, her voice not ethereal as it had been before, beckoning him to come inside. He walked slowly across the room, as though he’d forgotten how, his eyes burning holes through her visage as she went about wiping the old wood of the bar off with a dirty rag.
When he finally seated himself she still hadn’t acknowledged him, he couldn’t believe that the erstwhile object of all his writing, of all his thoughts, of all his dreams, could possibly have forgotten about him, yet it appeared that she had as she began to wipe smears off pint glasses. It wasn’t nearly the epic reckoning he’d built up in his head, and angrily, he addressed it.
“How can you not remember me?” He demanded, pointedly.
She continued with the glass so he asked again louder.
“How can you possibly not remember me?”
“Are you talking to me?” She asked quizzically, finally turning to look at him with those same stone grey eyes.
He couldn’t believe it.
He chewed his bottom lip nervously.
“I saw you in that alley a few months ago” gesturing wildly in no particular direction as though she should remember, “you were homeless, I gave you some money and you told me my future!”
“I’m sorry sir but I’ve never been homeless, you must have me mistaken for somebody else. What can I get you?”
“No!” he demanded, growing increasingly impatient and increasingly loud, “I’m sure it was you!”
The rest of the bar paid attention to him as he raised his voice, Katya smiled and looked around pleadingly, “Sir, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
He moved to stand up, mouth agape with intentions to cause a scene, but before he could she leaned over the bar and grabbed his hand hard, fingers tight like talons, ice cold around his palm. “Not. Now.” she hissed.
“You need to leave, it’s not time yet”, something black in her voice sent chills down his spine.
“Wait” he said, words escaped him once again.
She smiled faintly, “For?”
“What do you mean it’s not time yet, time for what?” he asked, bewildered.
“You’ll see.” Her voice barely audible.
“So what’ll it be?” she asked pleasantly, immediately reverting to normalcy.
He paused, stunned. “A umm… I’ll have a Maker’s Mark, neat, I guess.”
“Coming right up!” Her voice was saccharine.
He bit down a little too hard and tasted blood, metal on his lips.
When his drink arrived he downed it and continued to stare, studying her, all the poetic words he’d struggled to find lost in her every movement. He resolved to wait for her shift to end so he could interrogate her further but sometime between his third and fourth drink she disappeared out the back of the bar.
He realized she’d gone when her replacement stepped through the door she’d departed from moments earlier. “What can I…”, he cut the man off, throwing on his jacket and bolting for the door in hopes of catching her, but when he arrived in the alley of the bar she was nowhere to be found. Unphased, he walked back inside intending to interrogate the new bartender for enough information to find her again.
“The girl who worked the shift just before you, who is she?”
“Oh, Katya?” he replied, “What do you want with her?”
“When does she work next?
“Oh I don’t know man, she’s new, just been pickin’ up a few shifts lately, here and there ya know”
Shockingly unhelpful, he thought, as he ordered a final drink, he figured he’d just come back again and see her then.
And so he did. Every day he’d come back to the bar and every day he’d hang around like a ghost, waiting to see her sweeping in through the doors she’d exited. Every day he’d question whatever disappointing bartender he was met with and every day he’d be brushed off with a “Oh I don’t know man” or a “Oh, I haven’t seen her for a bit.” Not a single one of them knew anything about her, not a single one knew where she’d gone.
Once again “every day” stretched into months, drowning himself in liquor at that bar, hoping to catch just a glimpse of her. Once again he filled his wastebasket with crumpled drafts detailing every single one of Katya’s features. He wrote about how he loved her, he wrote about how he’d marry her, he wrote about how he’d hurt her for toying with him. He descended into madness pondering her eyes, and he figured it was her fault that he was broken, blameless in his own insanity, trapped in a self-made hell.
When a year had passed he figured he’d just give up, his only sense of purpose seemingly gone with the wind. He had nothing to write about but her, and if she couldn’t be found then he had nothing to write about at all.
But she said she’d be there when he died.
He bought a gun that day before he went to her bar, hoping against hope that he’d see her again, but he didn’t. He loaded it when he got home, pouring himself a last glass of whiskey to steady his hands. He cocked it after he’d downed the glass, almost laughing at the elegant irony that he was to kill himself in hopes of seeing her, and was ready to kill himself because he hadn’t yet, almost.
As he steeled his nerves to pull the trigger he heard a knock at his door and he knew who it was, his stomach leapt into his chest. When he threw the door open he saw her standing there in a little black dress, her raven hair fell like water down her back, her grey eyes pierced him and her lips, somehow even redder than before, moved to murmur “it’s time.”
“Do you know what you’ve put me through?!” He shouted, hands coiled, ready to wrap around her slender neck.
“It’s time” she said again, her voice barely a whisper as she floated past him into his drab apartment.
“What the fuck are you talking about ‘it’s time?!’”
“It’s time” she said again, louder this time as she seated herself at his table, pouring herself a glass of his whiskey.
“Stop fucking saying that, time for what?!” he yelled, slurring a bit as he seated himself opposite her.
“It’s time” she said as she raised his new gun, pointing it at his open mouth.
He stared.
She smiled, blood red lips parted to reveal teeth whiter than sun-bleached bone, and she pulled the trigger.
When the police arrived a week later at the behest of his landlord who’d “smelled something awful” coming from his place they found him slumped backwards in the chair. They saw the gun dropped neatly to the floor from his limp arm. They saw blood sprayed across his ceiling, the cabinets behind him, and in drips down his chin from the hole he’d chewed in his lower lip. They saw a single empty glass that had once held whiskey, and they saw an unfinished note, signed with a kiss in brown dried blood.
“Dear Katya,” was all it said.
